By NICK EATON, P-I REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, June 29, 2006

[Editor's Note: The original version of this article misstated Ric Weiland's cause of death.]

He was a quiet and modest man, but his contributions to the community spoke loudly of his passion for helping people in need.

Ric Weiland, one of the first five Microsoft Corp. employees, died Saturday at his Seattle home at the age of 53. The King County Medical Examiner's Office said he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

"He never wanted any special recognition for his giving," said Audrey Haberman, executive director of the Pride Foundation and a friend of Weiland's. "He loved the idea of helping other people. He had sort of a tremendous compassion in his life."

Weiland attended Lakeside School in Seattle with Microsoft co-founder and good friend Paul Allen. Allen and Bill Gates hired him in 1975, the same year they founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, N.M.

As one of just five Microsoft employees, Weiland was a lead programmer and developer for the company's BASIC and COBOL systems, two of the first personal computing interfaces.

Weiland moved with Microsoft to Seattle in 1979. After a stint at Harvard Business School, he rejoined Microsoft in 1982 and worked as the project leader for Microsoft Works, the company's second-tier word processing and spreadsheet software.

"Ric was certainly a key contributor to Microsoft's early success and was a brilliant programmer," Allen said in a statement Thursday. "I have many fond memories of Ric and all the things we did together, and I will miss him."

After leaving Microsoft in 1988, Weiland dedicated most of his time to philanthropy.

He was a member of the Pride Foundation's board of directors from 1997 to 2002, and helped win the foundation's fight to get General Electric Co. to include sexual orientation in their non-discriminatory policy, Haberman said.

"He really understood ... the range of issues that strengthen the gay community," she said. "He will be tremendously missed, just because of who he was. ... Everyone who met him always liked him."

Weiland was a regular contributor to the Lifelong AIDS Alliance since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, and ramped up contribution in the past few years, said Executive Director Tina Podlodowski, who worked with Weiland at Microsoft from 1984 to 1988.

"I think he made his philanthropic decisions as well as his business decisions," Podlodowski said.